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Finally. After almost ten years, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, the revival of the hit television show, was released on Netflix. And, yes, on the day of the release, I woke up at 6 a.m. to binge watch the whole series. I got to say, it was incredible.

The amazing thing about the show is that it’s as though no time has elapsed. The writing is as snappy as ever, and each actor captured their character perfectly – you’d think after all that time, one of them would waiver in their performance. But every performance was perfect. In particular, Kelly Bishop’s performance of Emily Gilmore was Emmy and Golden Globe worthy, as was Liza Weil’s Paris Geller.

One thing I noticed in the second episode, “Spring,” Lorelai is talking about her relationship ship and she says she was married to Rory’s dad but got divorced because “it was never supposed to happen. It was always supposed to be Luke.” The interesting thing is Lorelai got married in the seventh season, the season Amy Sherman-Palladino (ASP), the creator, was not working on the show – she left due to contractual disputes. This revival gave ASP the chance to end the show she had intended. I read an article where ASP and her husband Daniel Palladino said they’d probably would’ve ended the show in the seventh season anyway, but they would’ve “done it better.” So, I was thinking perhaps Lorelai’s comment that her marriage was never supposed to happen was literally ASP stating the marriage was never supposed to happen – when ASP was forced to leave the show, the network took the show down a road that wasn’t right.

Anyway, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is absolutely incredible – if you aren’t a Gilmore Girls fan, you will be soon!

I know I’m a little late with this – I had a major term paper due this week – but the Gilmore Girls revival trailer is finally here! While I’m thoroughly excited, I have mixed feelings about it.

I have a feeling the series is about how Richard Gilmore (Lorelai’s father, Rory’s grandfather) dies (the actor, Ed Hermann passed away before the revival was made) and all three Gilmore women find themselves lost as tends to happen after losing a love one, and then them each finding new meaning in their lives. While I’m excited about traveling back to Stars Hollow, the whole subject of death and losing yourself could be rather depressing. Either way, I’m watching it on November 25th, I’m just hoping it’s not terrible.

In addition to this exciting release this week, it was announced today that NBC is considering reviving Will & Grace, and that Disney is reviving That’s So Raven. Part of me hears this news and thinks “can we not think of new material?” Why don’t we give new talent a try and see if we can tell new stories.

At the same time, though, I think this revival culture that’s going on is rather exciting. Being able to see where our favorite characters are now and what they’re doing is intriguing.

But if you think about the networks’ reasoning for creating the revivals, it’s rather smart. These are shows that people loved watching and had/have a huge following. Before any of these revivals were announced, there were podcasts dedicated to Gilmore Girls and the life of Stars Hollow, people would still laugh over Karen Walker’s burns, and Raven Baxter’s catch phrase “ya nasty” was still being repeated. Investing money in recreating these shows means that people would most likely watch them and the return on investment would be high. Unlike creating a brand new show, there wouldn’t be a barrier where people would have to learn about what the show is about and whether they’d enjoy it. People are already fans, so they’ll watch it. Easy money.

Except, the problem is, networks simply can’t create random garbage scenes and expect fans to buy-in to it. While there is a fanbase, the quality of the revival has to be high. For instance, if in the Gilmore Girls revival Luke and Lorelai are not married or together, fans would be rather angered by it. It took Luke and Lorelai five season to get together, but then they broke up twice and it wasn’t until the final episode of the last season they got back together for what we can only assume as for the last and final time. If they’re still playing this on again off again relationship ten years later, it would be infuriating. There would be no growth in the plot, so why should we watch? While reviving shows makes it easier for networks to get initial viewing, to sustain the viewership – i.e. getting fans to watch the entire season – requires them to still produce the high level quality of a show fans have come to know and love.

Overall though, big week for tv. Now how I’m going to watch it all while going to school and working I do not know….

Gilmore Girls is one of those rare shows that you can watch more than once and each time you’ll find something new. The show is littered with so many references that a lot of them tend to get missed.

In particular, I started watching the HBO show The Comeback about a year or so ago, and I really enjoyed it, but I never realized it was referenced in Gilmore Girls. In The Comeback, Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe of Friends) plays Valerie Cherish, a ’90s sitcom has-been who tries to make her comeback in a new reality show that follows her on a new sitcom she’s doing. The first season takes place in the early 2000s when reality tv was becoming quite popular. The show got canceled but then picked up again for a second season ten years later. Apparently it got renewed for a third season, but Kudrow said they’re taking a long break before filming that. Anyway, it’s an interesting show because it’s filmed as though it’s the raw footage of the reality show, which is at first strange but quite enjoyable once you get used to it.

In the new sitcom Valerie stars in, her character has a catch phrase of “I don’t want to see that!”

Then, I was flipping through YouTube and I found this clip where Lorelai references Valerie and does the “I don’t want to see that!” I was so excited, I couldn’t believe I missed that reference the first couple times I saw the episode! I also want to note Lauren Graham’s Valerie Cherish is spot on.

OH. MY. GOSH. GILMORE GIRLS IS COMING BACK NOVEMBER 25TH. I was literally talking with a coworker about the revival and wondering when it would be released this morning. I then left work, went for a bike ride, and came home to see it trending on Facebook and Twitter. And it looks so good! I guess we all know what I’ll be doing November 25th.

Since they announced the Gilmore Girls revival on Netflix, everyone was wondering if Melissa McCarthy – Stars Hollows most successful alum – would return. It was kind of a given that all the other actors would return, but McCarthy – who since won an Emmy and nominated for an Oscar – was an unknown. But the fact remained that they couldn’t do the revival if McCarthy, who played Lorelai’s (Lauren Graham) best friend and business partner Sookie St. James, didn’t sign on. I mean, Lorelai wouldn’t be able to go to work in the mini movies because she would have to see Sookie, and they seriously could not recast that role.

But, McCarthy recently announced on Ellen that she’s finally closed a deal and will reprise her role!!!

It kind of sounds like she’ll basically make a cameo appearance and be in the series for like two seconds, but at least Sookie will be present.

A month or so ago (time flies, doesn’t it?), there were rumors flying around that Netflix was going to revive the beloved Gilmore Girls like they are with Full House (titled Fuller House). I saw pictures floating around the internet of them recreating the sets, making many of us believe the revival is going forward.

I saw an article on Facebook or Twitter or somewhere that suggested that they would introduce a new love interest for a main character, but the creators wouldn’t said if it was for Lorelai, Rory, Luke, or Emily (since Edward Herrmann has passed before the revival, they’re going make Emily a widow). I have no idea if this is true, but it would be stupid for them to revive the show and not have Luke and Lorelai together. I mean, it literally took them seven years for them to get together (and stay together). So, if the show is revived and Luke and Lorelai and not married or in a committed relationship, then what’s the point?

If this rumor is true, I would think the love interest is for Rory. The show ended with her ending her relationship with her college boyfriend, and now she’d be finishing up her first major reporting job (following Obama’s career from campaigning through his administration). Since she probably was on the road for eight years, it would make sense for the limited series to showcase Rory coming home to Stars Hollow and meeting a new guy.

The only question is, albeit random, will Melissa McCarthy return as Sookie now that she’s the mega-comedy star? I don’t think the show could work without her.

This week has had so many huge announcements, it’s crazy. It all started Monday night when I couldn’t get to sleep, so I started scrolling through Facebook to find that Netflix is REVIVING GILMORE GIRLS!!! Really, that was the last thing I needed to hear at 11:00 p.m. because I was bouncing off the walls with excitement.

I read on many different sources that Netflix got the rights of Gilmore Girls from Warner Bros. and they signed a four episode deal with Amy Sherman-Palladino, the show creator and writer. The episodes would be about ninety minutes, so we’d basically get like four mini movies (and I was just hoping for one!). As far as I hear, they are currently in negotiations with the actors (notable Lauren Graham who was Lorelai and Alexis Bledel who played Rory), which if that goes well we will have a revival of the classic television show!

I believe those negotiations will go well because during their reunion in August, they all seemed like they really wanted to make a movie or have a revival. My only concern is Melissa McCarthy, who was pivotal in the series playing Sookie St. James, Lorelai’s best friend and business partner. Since the series’ end, McCarthy’s career seemed to explode with another hit tv show, Mike & Molly, for which she won an Emmy, and a list of blockbuster movies, which include Spy, The Heat, and Bridesmaids, which got her numerous awards and nominations including an Academy Award nomination. I sincerely hope Melissa McCarthy returns to her roots and makes these four episodes, Gilmore Girls really couldn’t work without Sookie. Granted, there will be about an eight year gap – they’re not writing it as though no time has passed, they’re going to write it in the present – so Sherman-Palladino could find a way to write Sookie out, but it won’t have the same spark.

On a more positive note, I realized the other night that in the end of the last season, Rory got a job as a journalist where she’d follow Obama for as long as he “did well.” By the time the revival would probably be released, Obama will be leaving office so Rory would have been returning to Stars Hollow after finishing up her assignment…it was timed so well!

Anyway, I read that this revival is not set in stone so we shouldn’t get our hopes up, but still…something is happening, and hopefully we can go back to Stars Hollow just one more time.

I was watching an old episode of Gilmore Girls the other night – I’ve been re-watching the show, their reunion got me nostalgic – and I got to the part in season three where Lane wants to go to the prom with Dave Rygalski, the guitarist of her band, but she knows her mom won’t approve of a non-Korean. So, Dave goes over to her mom and gives a whole speech of how responsible he is and how he is the proper date for Lane, and Mrs. Kim responds with “Let never day nor night unhallow’d pass, but still remember what the Lord hath done.”

Naturally, Dave thinks it’s from the Bible, so he spends the whole night reading it to understand what Mrs. Kim meant. He later confronts her exhausted, desperate to know what she meant. She tells him that it wasn’t from the Bible, but Shakespeare’s Henry VI and that she likes to “goof off” every now and then. She doesn’t actually explain her choice of quote, but allows Dave to take Lane to the prom because of his feat of reading the whole bible in one night.

Well, me being me, I was curious as what the quote from Henry VI actually meant, so I did some googling and I found this entry from a chatroom/discussion board that kind of blew my mind:

"The quote is a line from a play: Shakespeare's Henry VI. The King makes this statement to a man, formerly blind, who has gained sight. Hallowed means prayed over.
For those who are looking for the meaning of the line after hearing Mrs. Kim quote it: remember that Mrs. Kim has believed Lane's affections to have been previously unrequited. It's funny to think of her saying, subtly, to this boy, now proclaiming his crush on her daughter, 'Now you can see!'"

What’s fantastic about this is that the writers could’ve put any Shakespeare or Biblical quote there and the whole scene/episode would have worked because the point wasn’t really what Mrs. Kim said, but it was that she needed to say something to get Dave to read the whole Bible in one night so that she would think him worthy enough to date her daughter. Instead, assuming this person is correct (and I think they are), the writers chose a quote that would give Mrs. Kim a kind of sass, where she’s basically like “yeah, my daughter is the amazing, took you long enough.” And that’s the great thing about Gilmore Girls, the jokes and dialogue work on so many levels. You could watch an episode like five times, and each time get something new from them.

You know when you’re reading an article online and on the side they’ll sometimes have suggested titles with a picture like “14 Celebs That Hate Each Other.” I really don’t care about that stuff and I usually just ignore it, but this time it was a picture of Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson, the actors who played Lorelai and Luke on Gilmore Girls. It caught my eye because I remember reading something after the show finished where Graham said that she didn’t want Luke and Loreali to be together (even though at the Gilmore Girls reunion a couple weeks ago she said she wanted to see them get married), so I was curious if perhaps she said it because of her personal feelings towards the actor.

So I read it, and it legit said “[Graham] claimed they got along well enough to work together, but beyond that, they had their own lives and were not friends at all.” So…how do you get “hate” out of this. They were coworkers, nothing more. I think most of us experience this type of relationship with our colleagues: we go to work, we exchange nice pleasantries, get through the day, and go home. Just because we aren’t BFFs doesn’t mean we hate each other.

*sighs*

I’m just tired to people taking what other people say and bending it and twisting to make it seem shocking. Really it was a waste of click.

Over the weekend, the cast of Gilmore Girls had a little reunion and discussed their experiences from the show at a panel at some festival. I found out about it the other day on Twitter, but learned I couldn’t stream it. Finally, Entertainment Weekly posted the video, and so I decided to share the link. Even if you aren’t that big of a Gilmore Girls fan, it was actually interesting to learn about how they created and casted the show. Click here to see the video.

There’s still no Gilmore Girls movie in the works, but I think especially with its release on Netflix, there should be one coming…fingers crossed!

What’s interesting is that Alexis Bledel says during the panel that Lauren Graham had to “man-handle” her to keep her on camera during the pilot because she kept missing her mark, and if you rewatch the pilot (which I’m doing) you actually can see Graham grabbing Bledel and guiding her into rooms.

UPDATE:

EW uploaded an unedited version of the panel…if you watched the above link, you may have noticed some random cuts. Here’s the link to the unedited version.